


Breakdown Lane

by Molly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Easy job, Bobby had said.  Bring salt and matches and a good book.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakdown Lane

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to luzdeestrellas for the quick beta, and to mistyzeo for the prompt at silverbullets, _open mic_.

Woodsdale was miles behind them, but Sam still had grave dust in his hair and Dean's blood on his hands. He rode in silence in the passenger seat, staring at the faded yellow line that spooled past on the side of the road. Beside him, Dean snuck grim looks at him and then tried to pretend he hadn't whenever Sam caught him at it. Dad used to say Dean was a born liar; it made him smile like all the straight-A semesters Sam could rack up never had. But Dean was shit at lying to family, always had been. Sam could never figure out why he bothered.

Between them, cold and silent and invisible, sat Sam's fuck-up at the Sunset Lawn Cemetery -- a facility so ancient the town itself had forgotten about it. Lost in the wooded hills north of the abandoned Pentecostal church (and the Little League field that had replaced it in the hearts of Woodsdale's declining population), the cemetery was home to rabbits, mice, birds, several families of raccoons, and the bitter, bloodthirsty ghost of its erstwhile groundskeeper. Joseph Ezekial Barton had died in the late sixties of a fall from the roof of a shack just inside the rusted cemetery gate. It had been so long since anyone visited Sunset Lawn, and so long since Joseph had ventured out from it for more than groceries or liquor, that no one noticed.

Joseph hadn't troubled a soul in the years between his death and the recent election of Woodsdale's new, ambitious young mayor -- mostly due to the lack of souls to trouble in his general vicinity. When the town council voted to run a road through his woods -- and had the audacity to send out crews to clear the way -- they noticed fast. Mostly, they noticed their crews dying, in horrible and inventive ways usually reserved for late night marathons on the cable stations.

Easy job, Bobby had said. Bring salt and matches and a good book. That was pretty much how it went, too, until Old Man Barton latched his teeth around Dean's throat and Sam went right off the rails.

"If you're not gonna keep me entertained with the usual post-hunt overshare, you could at least find me some decent music," Dean said, when Sam caught him flicking his eyes over again. "I'm getting road hypnotized over here. Make yourself useful, dig out one of my tapes."

Sam rolled his eyes. It was something to do though, something to help scratch the persistent itch of impending gripe-fest lodged between his shoulder blades. The nearest motel, according to Google, was at the other end of seventy miles of dark, pitted highway. It was going to be a really long drive.

He found two Metallica tapes, too battered to even fit in the player, and a couple of Rush CDs Dean had picked up for reasons known only to himself -- as far as Sam knew, Dean had never owned a CD player in his life. Sam grabbed an unlabeled cassette in fairly decent condition and slotted it in. Generic metal flooded out of the speakers; Dean's mouth curved up, and his fingers started tapping on the steering wheel. To Sam, it sounded a lot like random screaming, and he had enough of that in his life already. He put his earbuds in, put on a podcast about dark matter that droned on in a grey, soothing monotone, and slumped down deeper into his seat.

Dean kept tapping, the road rumbled on under their wheels. Sam let himself drift, annoyed and comforted all at once. A minute or an hour later the car slowed, and a warm, red, flickering neon glare shone down on them out of the dark.

~

"This place sucks," Dean said, dropping their bags by the door. Sam had to contort himself like a circus freak to get around him and into the room. Dean wasn't wrong -- the ceilings were low and stained from water damage, and the carpet was a squashed, greasy-looking film of indeterminate color across the floor. A bare light bulb dangled from the ceiling by a cord, revealing far too much about the housekeeper's cleaning schedule, if such a person or schedule existed. Sam was betting 'no.'

"We've slept in worse places," Sam said.

Dean's eyes widened. "We've slept in Hell, Sam. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement."

"It's just for one night." Sam carried his duffle to the bed by the bathroom, pulled out a clean towel Dean stole from the last place they slept, and said, "First shower."

"Bitch," Dean said, but he was already kicking his shoes off and crawling into the bed by the door, fully clothed. Sam shook his head, and went to investigate the bathroom.

A minute later, he came back out and shut the door. "That's...not right, in there."

"That's what you get for twenty bucks a night in America," Dean said, not even bothering to roll over.

"We're not that far from Bobby's. I'll shower tomorrow." He used a bottle of holy water and one of Dean's socks to scrub some of the grime off his face and the blood off his hands, then shoved both back into Dean's duffle with the warm glow of spite in his heart.

When he turned back to the beds, Dean was looking at him again. Sam took a quick step forward before Dean could cover, pretend he'd been staring at a wall or Sam's hair or whatever; Dean's eyes narrowed, but he didn't look away.

"What?" Sam demanded.

"What, what?"

"What are you looking at me like that for? If you have something to say, just say it. I'm sick of watching you dance around it."

"The hell? I'm not looking at you like anything. When did you get so sensitive, Frances?" Dean sat up, kicked the covers off his legs and swung them over the edge of the bed. "Christ. I just fought off a fifty-year-old ghost with nothing but charm and good looks; now I have to fight you, too?" He stripped off his shirt, grabbed the towel Sam had abandoned on the dresser, and stomped into the bathroom.

A second later, the pipes groaned and the shower came on, drowning out whatever comeback Sam might have thought up.

"I hope the water's cold," Sam muttered instead. "I hope it's piped down from Canada."

The door opened, and Dean's head poked through it. "I heard that!"

"And I hope the roaches _eat_ you!"

"They should be so lucky," Dean said with a wide grin, and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

~

While Dean showered -- probably getting dirtier than he'd been going in -- Sam turned the TV on and paced. There wasn't any signal; just static that blended into the sound of the shower from the other room. Sam tried to pretend it was calming.

He kept running over and over what had happened by Barton's shed. It never came out any better. They thought the old guy had been buried in the grave marked with his name, but that was apparently just Barton's idea of planning ahead. Instead, his body still lay where it had fallen, rotting undiscovered for decades by the table where he'd taken his meals. When they found him, there was a spoon in his hand and a bowl by his head next to an overturned chair.

Dean had time to say, "No wonder he's pissed," before Barton descended on them like a whirlwind. Sam saw teeth and hair and wasted, outstretched arms, saw Dean splashing kerosene against the walls and the furniture, and then he saw Barton latch onto Dean like a leech; saw blood pouring out of Dean's throat like a river, saw Dean go pale and fall. The shotgun in Sam's hands was cleaned and oiled and loaded with rock salt, his finger was on the trigger. The clatter it made as it hit the floor was barely a footnote to the symphony of noise Barton had called up all around them; Sam flung out a hand, felt heat and rage and will rise up within him. He heard Dean shouting his name, and he lashed out with the power that flooded up high enough to choke him, and

 _nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened_

the power collapsed inside him, tumbled down and fell to dust, and Sam stood there shocked and unarmed and empty and _Barton still had Dean._

"Sam!"

Dean shook Sam by the shoulder; his hands felt like brands. Sam blinked, and the room bled back in through the memory. He tried to snatch it back; if he could just figure out how it had all gone wrong, it felt like he could reach back in and fix it. But that wasn't him; he couldn't reach back and edit the past so it came out better. That was somebody who'd lived under his skin for a while and left it empty of everything but expectations.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man?" Dean shook him again, less gently this time. "Don't blank out on me like that. I got enough stress in my life."

Sam pulled loose, and stepped deliberately away. Dean was too warm, too close, too freaked out for Sam to deal with him right now. "Sorry," he said. "My mind wandered. Let's just go to sleep, okay?"

" _Now_ you don't want to talk?"

"What do you want me to say, Dean? You're the one with the problem here, not me. You've been staring at me since we left the graveyard, and it's not that hard to guess what you're thinking."

"Sam..."

"Don't be shy, Dean. Let's _overshare_. I hesitated back there, I screwed up. You're thinking maybe I forgot who I was for a second, maybe I forgot what pocket I keep my soul in. Maybe I can't be trusted, soul or no soul." Sam's hands curled into fists at his sides, but it wasn't Dean he wanted to hit. "Spill it, man," he said. "Open mic night at the What's-Wrong-With-Sam-Now Café. Hit me."

"Sam." Dean's hands closed over Sam's shoulders again. "Jesus, Sam. Just sit down a minute, okay?"

Sam hissed out a breath, shaking inside; it was a wonder Dean couldn't feel it. "Why aren't you pissed at me? Why don't you _hate_ me?"

"Because, dude," Dean said quietly, "I think you have that covered. Come on, okay? Just...sit down and catch your breath and don't try to melt anything with your brain for a minute. Especially not yourself. Okay?"

Sam let himself be pushed to the bed, folded down onto it like a plastic action figure. Dean sat down across from him, less than a foot of space between them. Sam's hands clutched at each other between his knees, knuckles cracking; Dean grabbed them and pulled them apart, held Sam's hands in his.

"You remembered something," Dean said. "Back at the cemetery, and just now."

Sam nodded slowly. That was the big joke about the wall in Sam's head; after it came down, he was just as much in the dark as he'd been before. The blast wave of release had scoured most of it clean on its way out to wipe the Mother and all her little monsters off the face of the planet. Memories crept out of the rubble now and then -- pieces of Hell, pieces of what he'd been before he was Dean's brother again. No answers, though, no whole fabric of experience to help him make sense of himself.

"What did I tell you about that?"

"I can't help it. Things just float up sometimes. I'm trying, Dean, but --"

Dean shook his head and squeezed Sam's hands. "Hey. Sorry, man, I was just -- clearly this is not the time for kidding." He fell silent for just a second, visibly gathering himself; Sam almost smiled. "What was it?"

"Different things. It's never just one thing."

"Okay, so --"

"I let that vampire bite you," Sam said. "And Barton--"

"Also kind of bite-y." Dean nodded. "But I told you about all that before, so --"

"I was ... For a while, you know? Just a while, but. Lucifer was in me, and he could do things -- he could make things happen. And before that, the demon blood made it so I could do some things, too. I just -- I lost you, Dean, over and over, I just kept making these choices and losing you, and it's not like you didn't have reason enough, I know that. I know you did."

"That's ancient history. Both of us fucked up way more than our share, way more often than I care to think about."

"That's today, it's right now, Dean. You don't trust me, and I don't blame you. I haven't spent a lot of time being myself this past year, and even when I was--"

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a second." Dean let go of Sam's hands and pushed back, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "That's what you think? I don't trust you?"

"Why would you?"

"Because you're _you_ , Sam! Because you're my brother, because we went through all the crap Heaven and Hell and Earth could throw at us together and came out the other side, still together. Because I'm not an idiot, that's why. Dude, exactly how fucked up _are_ you?" Dean leaned forward and wrapped a hand around Sam's wrist, a worried look widening his eyes. "Are we talking about a few months of Prozac here, or something a little more in-patient?"

"I almost got you killed. Again."

"I was there. You yanked me out of there and set the whole place on fire; you saved my ass." Dean tilted his head. "What did you think you were supposed to do?"

"Shoot him. Get him away from you. Not waste time trying to whammy him with bad intentions."

"So, fine, whatever. It might have been nice to have his ectoplasm out of my jugular a few seconds sooner, but then I'd be sitting here picking rock salt out of my backside _and_ listening to your emo bullshit." Dean gave Sam a whack on the shoulder, the smile on his face taking away the sting. "I'd rather do one at a time, for future reference."

Sam stared at his brother, eyes wide. "Why would you--you've been staring at me like--"

"Like I'm a little surprised you're there, every time I see you, man." Dean held up a hand before Sam could say anything. "Not because I think you're going to bail on me when I need you, freak. I'm just not used to you yet, okay? I look over the seat and see you sitting there with dirt in your teeth and blood on your face, listening to fucking Enya or whatever, and every time it's like I get you back all over again." Dean laughed, low and easy; he sounded surprised. Embarrassed, but muscling through it like he always did. "Sammy, you can fuck up sixteen ways to Sunday every time we go out on a hunt, for all I care. As long as you keep ending up here where I can look at your stupid face on a regular basis, we're good. Okay?"

Sam took a breath; it caught in the middle, lodged in his throat and made the next one sharp and jagged. He nodded at Dean, but it was an afterthought, a sidebar to the way he was reaching out. The way he stretched his hand out just like he had in the shed, but this time it closed around the back of Dean's neck and held on. He was still nodding when he said, "Okay," still a wreck inside for reasons that shifted inside him and cracked against each other, but it didn't seem to matter. "Every day," Sam promised; that was what mattered. That was the important thing. "I'll be here every single day."

"Damn straight you will," Dean said, and let Sam pull him in.

  
~

.end

 


End file.
